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Great Britain road numbering scheme
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Great Britain road numbering scheme
In Great Britain, there is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads. Each road is given a single letter (representing a category) and a subsequent number (between one and four digits). Though this scheme was introduced merely to simplify funding allocations, it soon became used on maps and as a method of navigation. There are two sub-schemes in use: one for motorways, and another for non-motorway roads.
While some of Great Britain's major roads form part of the international E-road network, no E-routes are signposted in the United Kingdom. Due to changes in local road designation, in some cases roads are numbered out of zone. There are also instances where two unrelated roads have been given exactly the same number; for example, the Leicester Ring Road and a road in Cumbria are both designated A594.
This scheme applies only to England, Scotland and Wales; a separate system using similar conventions is used in Northern Ireland, as well as outside the United Kingdom in the Isle of Man, Jersey and British Overseas Territories.
Work on classification began in 1913. The Road Board had been established in 1909 to administer Vehicle Excise Duty - money raised by taxation to pay for new road construction and for repair of damage done to existing roads by the growing number of motorists. As the Board needed to work out which roads should be funded, upgraded or replaced, its secretary, William Rees Jeffreys, appointed Henry Maybury, one of the Board's senior engineers, to devise a classification system and then assign numbers to the highways for identification purposes. The work was interrupted by the First World War.[citation needed] It did not resume until the Ministry of Transport was formed in 1919 and given authority to classify highways and to allocate funding for road maintenance, authority for which was granted by section 17 (2) of the Ministry of Transport Act 1919.[citation needed] A classification system was created in 1922, under which important routes connecting large population centres, or for through traffic, were designated as Class I, and roads of lesser importance were designated as Class II. The definitive list of those roads was published on 1 April 1923, following consultations with local authorities.[citation needed] Government funding towards the repairs of these roads were set at 60% for the former and 50% for the latter.
Shortly after this, the numbers started to appear in road atlases and on signs on the roads themselves, making them a tool for motorists[citation needed] in addition to their use for determining funding. The numbers of the roads changed quite frequently during the early years of the system, because it was a period of rapid expansion of the network and some numbered routes did not follow the most usual routes taken.[citation needed] The Trunk Roads Act 1936 gave the Ministry direct control of major routes and a new classification system was created to identify these routes. Originally, those numbers beginning in T were to be made public, but that was eventually deemed unnecessary.[citation needed]
With the introduction of motorways in the late 1950s, a new classification of "M" was introduced. In many cases the motorways duplicated existing stretches of A road, which therefore lost much of their significance and were in some cases renumbered. There was no consistent approach to the renumbering – some A roads retained their existing number as non-primary roads (e.g. the A40 running alongside the M40), others were given "less significant" numbers (e.g. the A34 in Warwickshire became the A3400 after the M40 was built), and the remainder were downgraded to B or unclassified roads (e.g. the A38, which was replaced by the M5 between Tiverton and Exeter).[specify] Occasionally, the new motorway would take the name of the old A road rather than having its own number. The most notable example of that is the A1(M).
In England and Wales the road numbering system for all-purpose (i.e. non-motorway) roads is based on a radial pattern centred on London. In Scotland the same scheme is centred on Edinburgh. In both cases the main single-digit roads normally define the zone boundaries.[citation needed] The exception is between Zones 1 and 2, where the River Thames defines the boundary so that all of Kent is in Zone 2.[citation needed]
The first digit in the number of any road should be the number of the furthest-anticlockwise zone entered by that road. For example, the A38 road, a trunk road running from Bodmin to Mansfield starts in Zone 3, and is therefore numbered with an A3x number, even though it passes through Zones 4 and 5 to end in Zone 6. Additionally, the A1 in Newcastle upon Tyne has moved twice. Originally along the Great North Road, it then moved to the Tyne Tunnel, causing some of the roads in Zone 1 to lie in Zone 6. The designated A1 later moved to the western bypass around the city, and roads between the two found themselves back in Zone 1. For the most part the roads affected retained their original numbers throughout.
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Great Britain road numbering scheme
In Great Britain, there is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads. Each road is given a single letter (representing a category) and a subsequent number (between one and four digits). Though this scheme was introduced merely to simplify funding allocations, it soon became used on maps and as a method of navigation. There are two sub-schemes in use: one for motorways, and another for non-motorway roads.
While some of Great Britain's major roads form part of the international E-road network, no E-routes are signposted in the United Kingdom. Due to changes in local road designation, in some cases roads are numbered out of zone. There are also instances where two unrelated roads have been given exactly the same number; for example, the Leicester Ring Road and a road in Cumbria are both designated A594.
This scheme applies only to England, Scotland and Wales; a separate system using similar conventions is used in Northern Ireland, as well as outside the United Kingdom in the Isle of Man, Jersey and British Overseas Territories.
Work on classification began in 1913. The Road Board had been established in 1909 to administer Vehicle Excise Duty - money raised by taxation to pay for new road construction and for repair of damage done to existing roads by the growing number of motorists. As the Board needed to work out which roads should be funded, upgraded or replaced, its secretary, William Rees Jeffreys, appointed Henry Maybury, one of the Board's senior engineers, to devise a classification system and then assign numbers to the highways for identification purposes. The work was interrupted by the First World War.[citation needed] It did not resume until the Ministry of Transport was formed in 1919 and given authority to classify highways and to allocate funding for road maintenance, authority for which was granted by section 17 (2) of the Ministry of Transport Act 1919.[citation needed] A classification system was created in 1922, under which important routes connecting large population centres, or for through traffic, were designated as Class I, and roads of lesser importance were designated as Class II. The definitive list of those roads was published on 1 April 1923, following consultations with local authorities.[citation needed] Government funding towards the repairs of these roads were set at 60% for the former and 50% for the latter.
Shortly after this, the numbers started to appear in road atlases and on signs on the roads themselves, making them a tool for motorists[citation needed] in addition to their use for determining funding. The numbers of the roads changed quite frequently during the early years of the system, because it was a period of rapid expansion of the network and some numbered routes did not follow the most usual routes taken.[citation needed] The Trunk Roads Act 1936 gave the Ministry direct control of major routes and a new classification system was created to identify these routes. Originally, those numbers beginning in T were to be made public, but that was eventually deemed unnecessary.[citation needed]
With the introduction of motorways in the late 1950s, a new classification of "M" was introduced. In many cases the motorways duplicated existing stretches of A road, which therefore lost much of their significance and were in some cases renumbered. There was no consistent approach to the renumbering – some A roads retained their existing number as non-primary roads (e.g. the A40 running alongside the M40), others were given "less significant" numbers (e.g. the A34 in Warwickshire became the A3400 after the M40 was built), and the remainder were downgraded to B or unclassified roads (e.g. the A38, which was replaced by the M5 between Tiverton and Exeter).[specify] Occasionally, the new motorway would take the name of the old A road rather than having its own number. The most notable example of that is the A1(M).
In England and Wales the road numbering system for all-purpose (i.e. non-motorway) roads is based on a radial pattern centred on London. In Scotland the same scheme is centred on Edinburgh. In both cases the main single-digit roads normally define the zone boundaries.[citation needed] The exception is between Zones 1 and 2, where the River Thames defines the boundary so that all of Kent is in Zone 2.[citation needed]
The first digit in the number of any road should be the number of the furthest-anticlockwise zone entered by that road. For example, the A38 road, a trunk road running from Bodmin to Mansfield starts in Zone 3, and is therefore numbered with an A3x number, even though it passes through Zones 4 and 5 to end in Zone 6. Additionally, the A1 in Newcastle upon Tyne has moved twice. Originally along the Great North Road, it then moved to the Tyne Tunnel, causing some of the roads in Zone 1 to lie in Zone 6. The designated A1 later moved to the western bypass around the city, and roads between the two found themselves back in Zone 1. For the most part the roads affected retained their original numbers throughout.
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